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Music Features

Yosvany Terry

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PREVIEW With his new suite of songs, "Ye-dé-gbé and the Afro-Caribbean Legacy," Yosvany Terry puts his audience on a swivel, looking forward while also looking back. The Cuban-born composer-saxophonist-percussionist incorporates elements of Arará rhythms — a style brought to Cuba by slaves taken from Dahomey, now Benin, in West Africa — into his angular modern jazz writing.

"Even though I’m looking back at history, I’m trying to create something which can be combined with the most modern material I’ve been working on," Terry said from his New York City home. Three of Terry’s compositions were recorded on pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s latest album, Avatar (Blue Note), which was released this spring. Though Terry was most recently heard on that disc with Rubalcaba’s brilliant new quintet, the "Ye-dé-gbé" project has a more anthropological genesis. Terry traveled to Matanzas, Cuba, and studied with Mario "Mano" Rodriguez Pedroso, one of the greatest living drummers in the Arará tradition. He even had his own Arará drums made there. "The way the drums are played with sticks is a Dahomey tradition, which I bring up to date," he explained. "You can hear the deep foundation, which is very old, but at the same time, you hear it in a context which sounds very modern."

The music combines percussive layers with call-and-response chants and modern jazz soloing. Terry also gives credit to Bay Area percussionist Sandy Perez as a key element in the development of the suite, which receives its West Coast premiere in a series of Bay Area performances by Perez and his Afro-Caribbean Legacy band. The group includes lead vocalist and percussionist Pedro Martinez, pianist Osmany Paredes, dancer Felix "Pupi" Insua, percussionist Roman Diaz, and Terry’s brother Yunior Terry on bass. (Marcus Crowder)

YOSVANY TERRY AND THE AFRO-CARIBBEAN LEGACY With Jesus Diaz, John Santos, and Michael Spiro. Fri/18, 8 p.m., $12–$15. Lecture-demonstration by Terry, Tues/22, 7 p.m., $10–$12. La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 849-2568, www.lapena.org. Also Sat/19, 1–3 p.m., free. Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, Mission and Third Sts., SF. www.ybgf.org. Also Sun/20, 7:30 p.m., $14–$28, Stanford Jazz Festival, Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford. (650) 725-ARTS, www.stanfordjazz.org

Download festival

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PREVIEW If there was an contest for the most cringe-inducing festival name ever, Download would win handily. This is the future, I guess: international corporations sponsoring Wal-Mart-style festivals that pack as many bands as possible into oversize, out-of-the-way suburban locations with deals that are hard to ignore. Aye, there’s the rub.

Scottish noise punk pioneers the Jesus and Mary Chain headline the seductively-priced one-day throwdown. Reformed last year, brothers William and Jim Reid became infamous in the early days for their too-wasted-to-play live shows, standing with their backs to the crowd during their 15-minute sets. But with newfound sobriety and a slew of recent festival dates under their belts, JAMC might have perfected their arena rock charisma by now.

Gang of Four is another UK band that originally broke up before Al Gore invented the Internet. Since re-forming in 2004, the British blowhards have released a remix album, toured hard, and plan to put out a new disc later this year, updating their rhythmic Marxism for a fresh generation of activist dance punks.

Wait — I know what you’re thinking: the members of the headlining acts probably can’t check their e-mail without assistance, let alone download. They probably still, like, tape things. But like any big-box retailer, Download has something for the kids: Yeasayer, which dominates college radio with its groovy world beats; Blitzen Trapper, the Portland-based six-piece with a flair for alt-country and lotsa buzz; and Airborne Toxic Event, who hails from Los Angeles and, just like their muse Don DeLillo, captivate audiences with their melodramatic pretension. And man, that’s just the beginning. With 26 bands slotted to play in one day, that’s only 77 cents a band!

DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL See Web site for complete lineup and set times. Sat/19, 1 p.m., $20. Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View. (650) 967-3000, www.downloadfestival.com

Dangerous jumpers

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"We’re not just late ’90s scientifical backpack revivalists," says Ian "Young God" Taggart, one-half of production duo Blue Sky Black Death.

It’s a reference only a hip-hop head could appreciate. The "super-scientifical" tag comes from a verse in Jeru tha Damaja’s 1994 classic "Can’t Stop the Prophet," a bizarre drama in which the Brooklyn MC battles thugs who represent the seven deadly sins. The term has come to represent an influential wing of ’90s hip-hop culture, evoking yin-yang flights of lyrically ornate action fantasy and pre-millennial dread.

But with its fourth album, Late Night Cinema, Blue Sky Black Death has distilled its essence into something more original than Wu-Tang Clan homage. Released on independent hip-hop label Babygrande this spring, it blends live instruments — by Young God and various musician friends — and samples into a dense tapestry of themes, from the antiwar epic "Ghosts Among Men" to the yearning romance "The Era When We Sang." The disc expertly evokes the group’s namesake, a skydiving term for snatching ecstasy from oblivion.

"Probably the most beautiful thing when you’re jumping out is all the blue sky, but it’s the most dangerous thing you can do at the same time, you know?" explains Taggart by phone from his Upper Haight District home. "That’s the black death. I thought it went well with our music because I thought it could be really dark or really pretty."

The 23-year-old Taggart doesn’t earn a living from music yet. Instead, he lives a journeyman’s existence sustained by a hodgepodge of retail and restaurant gigs. Meanwhile his Seattle musical partner, 30-year-old Kingston Maguire, has more stable employment as an apartment complex manager. "I feel like I’m attracted to bullshit jobs so I can focus on my music," Taggart says.

Since joining forces in 2005, Taggart and Maguire have worked hard to expand their audience beyond a small but appreciative following of hardcore rap fans. Their label has a — sometimes unfair — reputation for issuing angry, conspiracy-obsessed rap epics. Its flagship artist is Jedi Mind Tricks, a Philadelphia group whose ’90s-style beats and verbal assaults against organized religion and the government have become a controversial subgenre unto itself.

Blue Sky Black Death has expertly mined this niche with wintry street dreams such as 2007’s Razah’s Ladder, an album recorded in conjunction with Hell Razah from former Wu-Tang affiliate Sunz of Man. But Taggart’s afraid his group is being dismissed as a JMT acolyte. "Honestly, I don’t want to be lumped in with them," he says. "That’s not a diss towards any of those artists, and it’s probably our fault because of the people we’ve worked with. But we try to drift away from that with our instrumental music because we don’t want to be pigeonholed with our sound."

Blue Sky Black Death wants to break out of the super-scientifical ghetto without forsaking its roots. Upcoming projects range from Slow Burning Lights, a San Francisco downtempo band with Yes Alexander from the Casual Lights, to an album with rappers Ill Bill from Non-Phixion and Crooked I. "As far as when we’re making actual beats and we have rappers in mind, I guess we’re definitely influenced by the ’90s sound," says Taggart. "But we take it a lot farther."

Bittersweet symphonies

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Indie culture tends to romanticize dog-eared production as a sign of authenticity rather than one of limited means. When I interviewed Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang last winter, they emphasized how they strove for professionalism designing Galaxie 500’s epochal album sleeves and then laughed when we talked about how younger bands try to recreate their so-called handmade quality. Phil Wilson suffered an altogether nastier shock when fans of the June Brides rejected his attempts to expand the scope of the band’s singles from tattered nursery rhymes like "Every Conversation" to the more poised pop songsmithery of "Josef’s Gone."

Of all the casualties of indie capriciousness, the Junies seem to have had especially rotten luck. Originally formed in 1983 by Wilson and schoolmate Simon Beesley, the June Brides quickly swelled to accommodate trumpeter Jon Hunter and John Cale–inspired violist Frank Sweeney. The group was a staple of Alan McGee’s Living Room venue, but McGee didn’t sign the Junies to his ascendant Creation Records, purportedly writing the band off as too obvious a choice.

The Junies’ slapdash discography of postcard singles and a mini-album — all collected on Cherry Red’s essential 2005 anthology, Every Conversation: The Story of The June Brides and Phil Wilson — was par for the era, but the outfit had several brushes with something more: an NME cover story, opening slots for the Jesus and Mary Chain at their infamous Ambulance Station shows, and taking Morrissey’s vote as "best band of 1985." But before they could get their footing, the combo got caught in an unenviable snare of nostalgic fans and a press backlash toward the twee bands associated with the C86 (Rough Trade/NME, 1986) compilation.

Alan McGee did invite Wilson to record solo material for Creation after the Junies split up in 1986, but after a couple of tender, country-tinged singles didn’t sell, the singer-songwriter extricated himself to a career in civil service. A new four-song EP, Industrial Strength, released by Oakland indie-pop aficionados Slumberland, picks up the quirky folk-rock vein he left off with on "10 Miles" and "A Jingle." Wilson’s voice is a bit less herky-jerky than it once was, but he sounds refreshed on the jangly opener, "Neon Lights." The best song of the set, a hypnotic swirl of dream-pop called "United," shows he still has a knack for making a ecstatically romantic lyric sound a little anxious.

In the past, Wilson used to work the opposite way, dabbing forlorn verses in his quicksilver melodies and soft-curving arches of verse-chorus-bridge. Bittersweet pop doesn’t come any more delicately folded than the vocalist’s gorgeous goodbye to the ’80s on the Caff Records’ 1989 "Better Days"/"The Written Word" single. The flubbed notes and flat harmonies of the early June Brides singles are endearing, but Wilson’s later efforts with the band — see the glitzy panache of "Just the Same" — show that the singer-songwriter was drawn to Brill Building polish as much as Television Personalities scruff.

This was a solid decade before it became fashionable for indie-rockers to mine baroque pop à la Pulp and Belle and Sebastian — an English association that could easily be expanded to put the Junies in the same league as American melancholy artists like Yo La Tengo and Sebadoh. Wilson won’t be netting a check for his California mini-tour comparable to the one the Jesus and Mary Chain got for headlining Coachella last year, but his songbook remains ripe for rediscovery, this summer or any other.

PHIL WILSON

With Magic Bullets and the Mantles

July 23, 8 p.m., $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Port O’Brien

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PREVIEW A little more than a year ago, a "too-pretty-to-refuse-you" friend dragged me to a Bright Eyes concert. I remember almost nothing of the group’s set, and I wasn’t the drunk one. Connor Oberst, so hipster-slim you know he’s a lightweight, strutted on stage, Corona in hand, his stage presence as deflated as his sound, unsure of the notes in his repertoire’s half-octave range. His reputation as a talented musician debunked, he nevertheless justified his holding the helm at the label he founded, Saddle Creek, judiciously booking Oakland locals Port O’Brien as his opening band. Oberst isn’t the only A&R man with his eyes on O’Brien — just last year the band toured Europe with Modest Mouse, and for good reason.

With a quivering-lip, about-to-cry delivery held in common with Oberst, O’Brien frontman Van Pierazalowski sings log-cabin laments to the supporting sounds of soft-pedaled piano, back-porch banjo, and guitar strums. When drummer Joshua Barnhart turns on his snare, tightens his drumheads and polishes his crash cymbals, the sound morphs into an Appalachian anthem, the folk instrumentation swallowed by vocals sung together by the audience and the entire band. O’Brien leaves its audience members wishing their hearts had ears in one instant, and bouncing on the balls of their feet, arms held high and voices raised in song the next. If Oberst specializes in wrist-slitting emo, O’Brien cleans the wounds with a fusion of old-wives witch hazel and indie antiseptic sting: modern moonshine melodies to shout and sob our separate ways to catharsis.

PORT O’BRIEN With the Builders and the Butchers. Fri/11, 9:30 p.m., $12. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord.com

King Khan and the Shrines

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PREVIEW Local booty-shakers are hip to the musical ruler known as King Khan: when the two-member King Khan and BBQ Show played 12 Galaxies in December 2007, the joint was packed to the sweaty rafters. A bigger band calls for a bigger venue, so when the Montreal native returns to the Bay Area with his other project, King Khan and the Shrines, the faithful will no doubt follow him to the Great American Music Hall. His just-released latest, The Supreme Genius of King Khan and the Shrines (Vice), is a compilation of sorts, including an array of songs from earlier, difficult-to-track-down King Khan and the Shrines discs. "I love playing with BBQ as much as playing with the Shrines," he told me by e-mail — a necessary interview tactic due to his cell phone–deprived status in deepest Europe. "In the Shrines, we play bad-ass, ball-crushing R&B. The influences are pretty much the same, though the Shrines are more inspired by New Orleans 1960s funk and Sun Ra."

Although both of Khan’s bands are retro-influenced, he doesn’t feel stuck in the past. "I believe this music is an everlasting tradition that must be preserved and carried on," he wrote. "I don’t think we are that retro since we mix everything from free jazz to hardcore. Music is my religion, and I wanna preach the words of the masters to the masses and throw some of my own words in there too."

Khan fans may recall that his last trip to San Francisco wasn’t all rock ‘n’ roll romance, since one of his favorite guitars was lifted by some scumbag. "I am sad I lost it because it was really a Frankenstein guitar from the 1960s made by Harvey Thomas," he wrote. "I have put a hex on whoever stole it, and if you see a one-eyed man with a piece of spaghetti for a penis dangling between his legs, then ask him where my guitar is and punch him in the face."

Fortunately, he doesn’t hold it against the rest of us: "I love SF! I love America, and am so happy to bring my soul band back to where soul was born."

KING KHAN AND THE SHRINES With Jacuzzi Boys. Fri/11, 9 p.m., $13. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.gamh.com

Sound in the balance

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"Anger is an energy," sang John Lydon in the Public Image Ltd. tune "Rise." San Francisco electronic artist Kush Arora harnesses a similar combustible force in his live shows and on the three full-length recordings that have made him an established club fixture and touring act. "I try to do something different with music and express the frustrations of the youth in this country," says the affable 26-year-old Haight District resident, who performs with Chicago’s MC Zulu July 13 at Dub Mission.

Arora’s ragga-techno fusions have struck a chord with audiences from the Bay Area to New York, while monthly hybrid live/DJ sets at Club Six’s Surya Dub night have earned him a broad audience that includes dubstep heads, bhangra fans, experimental electronic admirers, and grime listeners. It makes sense as the former Montessori School teacher has always balanced different cultures.

Born in San Leandro and educated in Orinda’s leafy suburbs, Arora ingested death metal, punk, and experimental-industrial sounds, as well as his family’s Indian and Punjab music, learning traditional instruments like the single-stringed tumbi and algoze flute. His music experience increased after interning at his uncle Aman Batra’s Manhattan hip-hop studio Sound Illusions, and later working for sound-editing software company Arboretum Systems.

In high school he formed an experimental band called Involution, which he helmed for six years before launching his solo noise project Clairaudience in the early ’00s. But it was while attending a 14-month audio recording course at Emeryville’s Ex’Pressions that he learned a signature skill: recording live vocals. "When I was writing songs for my first album [2004’s Underwater Jihad (Record Label/Kush Arora Productions)], I wasn’t impressed with my own work or where electronic music was at the time. It wasn’t badass enough," explains Arora, who also felt there was a lack of high quality, vocal-based dance music in the Bay.

Soon Arora contacted and tracked stateside Punjabi singers and ragga MCs, including Chicago’s MC Zulu, Trinidad’s Juakali, Jamaica’s N4SA, Los Angeles’ Wiseproof, and San Jose’s Sukh and Sultan. "I wanted to work with people who were dangerous and different, especially vocalists who didn’t fall into their music’s niche or category," Arora says of the often confrontational and political artists he’s recorded on full-lengths like 2006’s Bhang Ragga and 2007’s From Brooklyn to SF, both released on his Kush Arora Productions imprint. The albums brought club bookings far and near.

Over the past several years Arora has played large Indian gatherings, small IDM shows, underground warehouse events, raves, and the monthly Non-Stop Bhangra party in San Francisco. His performance breakthrough happened in 2006 at DJ Sep’s weekly Sunday-night reggae party at the Elbo Room, Dub Mission. "That changed my whole presence in the city," he says.

Arora believes his family’s roots in the often-volatile Punjab region between India and Pakistan breathes through his music. "That’s why I like bhangra. It has an element of aggression and sadness," he reflects, acknowledging that those also are traits he looks for in his vocal collaborations. "The artists I work with have a real tug-of-war between good and evil in their lives. My music is their redemption and my redemption in a fateful balance." *

KUSH ARORA

Dub Mission on Sundays, 9 p.m., $6

(Arora and MC Zulu on July 13, $7)

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

www.dubmissionsf.com

Sneaky Creek

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TORSTEN KRETCHZMAR


What is it that makes Torsten Kretchzmar so different, so alluring? Perhaps it’s that he knows what girls like — as proven in the music video for "I Know What Girls Like," where the bespectacled German wins a barroom bro-down against a bunch of pool-playing dudes. Perhaps it’s because he’s the best Teutonic electropop icon since Klaus Nomi rocketed up to the sky. Or perhaps it’s because he’s — quite frankly — hot. Whatever the case, all will be screaming with Kretchzmarmaniac glee when he takes the stage. (Johnny Ray Huston) With Freddy McGuire, Justine Electra, and Katrina Lamb. July 16, 8 p.m., $5–$15 sliding scale. New Langton Arts, 1246 Folsom, (415) 626-5416

JEL


Oakland sound collagist Jeffrey Logan impressed the heck outta everyone and their brothers with his artful Soft Money (Anticon, 2006). Next up, a putf8um single, which will guarantee plastic surgery for his entire family. (Kimberly Chun) With the Sixteens, the Fucking Ocean, and NED. July 17, 9 p.m., $7. Eagle Tavern, 398 12th St., SF. (415) 626-0880

EXTRA ACTION MARCHING BAND VS. WHAT CHEER?


Can’t wait for the battle of the brass? The blood-spitting firestarters of the Bay’s EAMB kick off MCMF, and the 18-piece Providence, R.I., ensemble WC closes it with oodles of horn-dog action. (Chun) Extra Action Marching Band with Nurses, Fluff Girl, and Butt holes Urfers. July 18, 9 p.m., $8. Eagle Tavern, 398 12th St., SF. (415) 626-0880. What Cheer? with Tiger Honey Pot, MGM Grand, and Super Secreta Especiale July 20, 3:30 p.m. (all-ages show), $5. Million Fishes Gallery, 2501 Bryant, SF. www.millionfishes.com. What Cheer? with Super Secreta Especiale July 20, 8 p.m., $10. Amnesia Bar, 853 Valencia, SF. (415) 970-0012

ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI


He’s baaack. (Chun) With Anavan, Late Young, Rainbow Arabia, and Hecuba. July 18, 9 p.m., $10-$15. Cellspace, 2050 Bryant, SF. (415) 648-7562

EARLIMART


There is life after Elliott Smith. The former Fresno-nauts have scored mucho acclaim for their layered, sonically enriched new album — pun alert — Hymn and Her (Majordomo). It’s the third most added college-radio album in the nation to boot. (Chun) With Built Like Alaska and the Parson Red Heads. July 19, 9:30 p.m., $14. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016

LADY GENIUS


Volunteer Pioneer is gone but not forgotten: this SF fivesome formed in the ashes of guitarist Jason Byers’ and vocalist-multi-instrumentalist Kyle Williams’ group, emphasizing the pop bliss of boy-girl harmonies. Wait for it, wait for it: their first EP on Gold Robot Records. (Chun) With Huff This, Gwendolyn, and the Parish. July 19, 9 p.m., $7. Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300

I’m here with lonesome

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Loneliness is invoked on three of four songs on the White Buffalo’s MySpace page: "Love Song 1" finds its narrator on an island for one, staring at the sun; "The Moon" visits the shadows and grays of solo days; and "10 ‘Til 2" revolves around hopes to screw a hooker in the morning. Yet the White Buffalo’s main man himself — a.k.a. Jake Smith — is far from some namby-pamby Elliott Smith or any number of whiny hand-me-a-tissue, I’m-not-long-for-this-tortured-life modern singer-songwriters. Though Smith admits some compositions are personal, most, he says on the phone from southern California, are "fantastic, darker, little evil journey songs that are just imagination things and aren’t inspired by anything — at least, not to my knowledge."

Venture along the White Buffalo’s dark little journeys, for they’re good ones to take — full of the character-building that comes from Greyhounding through the rolling West. You end up resigned yet hopeful, with no obligations other than dreams of your next stop. The real white buffalo is a rare creature, and the White Buffalo — at times a solo project, at others a trio — conjures a similar mythos: Smith’s bio trumpets his solid stature, heavy boozing, and ability, like that of bygone legends, to marry his lifestyle with his art. And though this sounds sort of cheesy, White Buffalo’s music is not. On the contrary, what I love about the White Buffalo is his evident sincerity. Smith’s voice plunges you into clear, deep pools: infinite, enveloping, fully resonant like Eddie Vedder at his best — by far the easiest comparison — but with hints of Cat Stevens’ whispery warble and Joe Cocker’s soulful rasp. The occasional twang is likely derived from Smith’s childhood musical diet of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Wielding an acoustic rock, alt-country folkiness that lacks pretension, Smith could’ve written the score accompanying the vast geographical and philosophical landscapes of Into the Wild (2007).

Though he now lives in Orange County, Smith’s music may ring a bell if you were lucky enough to catch one of his handful of shows during the few years he resided in San Francisco, where he "just raised hell and waited tables." Since then he’s toured the world, developed his guitar chops — which remain simple and "just a way to get the message and the vocal across" — and recorded a self-released, self-titled 2005 EP. "Let the suuunnn / Fill me up again," he croons on "Where Dirt and Water Collide." My response? Let this voiiiccce fill me up again — and again and again. Between the sun and the White Buffalo, there’s no loneliness here, really.

THE WHITE BUFFALO

With the Blank Tapes and Agent Ribbons

July 17, 9 p.m., $10

Hotel Utah Saloon

500 Fourth St., SF

(415) 546-6300

Cream-colored slumbers

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Thank you, Brian Martinez. Were it not for this mutual friend, guitarist-vocalist Laura Weinbach and violinist Sivan Sadeh may have never met, and Foxtails Brigade — perhaps best but weakly described as experimental folk — may never have formed. And the two 25-year-old, classically trained musicians would miss the synergy they possess playing à deux. As Weinbach raved over the phone while the pair drove around San Francisco: "What’s really cool about violin and Sivan in particular is it’s really like having two to three vocal lines. She totally harmonizes with me, melodically, through the violin. Every song she’s been a part of becomes 100 times better."

The duo met last September and immediately began performing: they’ve already logged about 35 shows, entertaining everyone from sweet old folks in Santa Barbara convalescent homes to Weinbach’s surrogate high school students (she’s a substitute teacher). Sadeh’s rocked the violin nearly her entire life, playing in ensembles as diverse as mariachi to garage, while Weinbach studied creative writing and music at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which is obvious in both her seemingly effortless classical fingerpicking and her lyrical storytelling.

"Porcelain" is how their friend Uni, the one with the ukulele, dubs their unmatched sound. She’s right: the pretty melodies and flower-strewn stories conjure memories of playing dress-up in vintage finery. Yet a sharp, almost violent edge is ever-present, saving the music from sugary-sweet, indie-folk doldrums. Foxtails’ consistent intensity and experimental theatrics — think Faun Fables, an oft-cited influence — are largely due to the tension created by Sadeh. Her violin melodies dance around Weinbach’s vocal ones, taunting and tiptoeing, until they collide at each song’s climax, an act that often is as beautifully dissonant as it is gracious. "I like to screech on my violin when I have a chance, and get that kind of whiny sound that people really don’t want to listen to but are attracted to for some reason," Sadeh said, adding that she’s learning to play the similarly eerie-sounding saw.

Weinbach’s lyrics never fail on the storytelling front, whether she’s channeling a scary doll that comes alive in the dark of night or writing about a psychotic student. In the latter song, "For Leo," she sings, "But I have known your kind before / You’re linked by paper cuts and sores / Rotten green banana eyes / With chocolate milk and hungry flies." Creepy yet compelling, Foxtails dare you to turn away.

FOXTAILS BRIGADE

July 20, 8 p.m., call for price

Knockout

3223 Mission, SF

(415) 550-6994

Feeding the fire of Mountainhood

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Do you know the way to … Almaden? Not many know about that tiny, once-rural cowtown-now-San Jose-incorporated bedroom community. But Michael Hilde, a.k.a. Mountainhood, can map it out for you.

"I’ve never, ever played a show where I’ve told somebody that I’m from Almaden and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, yeah.’ No one has ever heard of it," the affable and intense songwriter swears, sitting on a log in a breezy patch of woods at a sandy edge of the Presidio. "But it’s a wild town. When I moved there, it was straight-up country. There were stallion farms and on the edge of my block there was a Harley-Davidson bar. Every Saturday night, guaranteed, you’d see two fat, wet guys just duking it out through the window."

Love of home led Hilde to name his 2007 CD-R on Finland’s 267 Laattajaa label after his town, as well as the name of his musical project (he switched to Mountainhood after a dream spent communing with Devendra Banhart and Andy Cabic on a star-filled mountain). Home also brought him to City Hall when that biker bar, Feed & Fuel, was about to be torn down. "It’s funny because when I went there, right before I was to speak, they were doing this whole bill on whether cops could have the right to bust into illegal immigrants’ houses and harass them," Hilde recalls. "And I was, like, ‘I can’t believe I’m here to, like, talk about saving a bar. There were all these people with translators weeping. So I got up and gave an impromptu speech, and then afterwards, I sat back down, and people were, like, ‘You were amazing! What do you do?’ I was, like, ‘I’m a folk singer,’ and they were like, ‘Oh, that makes sense. We get it.’<0x2009>"

And folks are starting to get Hilde’s brand of cosmic Americana — a blend of delicate Banhart-esque rusticity, 1960s-era transcendental instrumentals, and modern-day home-recorded drone experimentalism. After a handful of lower-fi releases, his next two albums, Thunderpaint the Stone Horse Electric and Wings from a Storm, will be put out this summer on 180-gram vinyl, with stickers of Hilde’s impressionistic paintings by Time Lag. Yet despite the fact that Hilde has been building a community of sorts with his monthly Story night at the Stork Club — each performer adds a bit to a running narrative during their set — Hilde seems to cherish his outsider status in the local music scene as he describes one packed Lobot Gallery performance. "I’ll never forget their expressions," he says, miming a look of opened-mouth disbelief. "It’s stayed that way ever since I started playing here."

MOUNTAINHOOD

July 19, 9 p.m., $5

Argus Lounge

3187 Mission, SF

(415) 824-1447

Sketches of Spain

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John Fahey remains the beacon of American Primitive Guitar, but Peter Walker’s two out-of-print 1960s albums — Rainy Day Raga and Second Poem to Karmela or Gypsies Are Important (both Vanguard; 1966, 1969) — are benchmarks of exuberant raga-blues sure to destroy any open-tuned acolyte. Solo guitar has never been a bankable venture — Fahey himself pawned instruments to pay the rent — but the recent stream of reissues and compilations (e.g., Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem series and Numero Group’s Guitar Soli) highlight the breadth and influence of this loose-knit musician’s movement, while younger disciples like Jack Rose, James Blackshaw, and Ben Chasny reanimate the tradition. Walker writes me a series of e-mails from Peru about his eye-opening experience touring with Rose: "I had no idea I could work in this country or that anyone cares about what I was playing…. All of these younger players have picked up the ball from Sandy Bull, me, Robbie Basho, and John Fahey and run with it."

The fresh faces on the 2006 A Raga for Peter Walker tribute album seem eager to lap up Walker’s former torrents of notes, but the 70-year-old guitarist has long since moved on to the more capacious terrain of Spanish flamenco. He points out that the form is based on some of the same scales as raga in the liner notes to his new record, Echo of My Soul (Tompkins Square), a bridge he’s given himself plenty of time to cultivate in his 40-year gap between records.

"I first went to Spain to study in the fall of 1963," he writes. "It wasn’t until that winter that I had a chance to study in Valencia with a Sr. Pappas, who sold meat during the day and taught flamenco at night a few miles outside the city. It transformed my view of the instrument and what was possible." This from the man who participated in at least two zeitgeists in his younger days, playing the Greenwich Village coffeehouse circuit with people like Tim Hardin and Karen Dalton, and serving as the "musical director" for Timothy Leary’s LSD-coated celebrations.

Once a bright light of the counterculture, Walker’s voracious musicality returned him to the semi-anonymity of tutelage. While Echo of My Soul evokes tender evenings and intergenerational anthems, it’s also something of a student portfolio: "I made a recording each year reflecting my development, [and] I took the best of these to make a compilation to submit as my application to play in a major competition in Murcia," Walker writes. "The consensus in the Sacromonte community was whether or not it was pure traditional flamenco. It was certainly very beautiful music, so I decided to release it."

When I saw Walker play at the 21 Grand two years ago, I knew nothing of this long back-story, but the explorative nature of his musicianship was plain from his relaxed performance. He ran through many of the lyrical themes and rippling chord clusters that comprise Echo of My Soul, pausing between each piece to relay a story from Seville, Granada, or Woodstock. The 21 Grand is a chilly performance space, but Walker imbued it with worldly warmth — something decidedly lacking in most club performances. It might seem anachronistic to travel thousands of miles to study a musical form in the age of the iPod, but computer interfaces cannot satisfy curiosity in such full bloom. "I am in Lima, having a blast," Walker mentions in our first e-mail exchange. "Great music scene here…. The flamenco/Inca/jazz fusion is great."

PETER WALKER

With the William Hooker Trio

July 19, 7 p.m., $12

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

Noise to go

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Load combo Monotract inspired immediate double — nay, triple — takes as it took the stage at the label’s South by Southwest showcase at Room 710 in Austin, Texas, last year. Noise impresario Carlos Griffoni and ace drummer Roger Rimada were missing in action due to a snowstorm, and the New York City band’s sole rep turned out to be guitarist-vocalist Nancy Garcia — flailing away on guitar with massive curls and girlish frock and evoking images of early punk women before the genre’s look, and sound, became codified. Alongside Garcia was an impromptu experimental-music supergroup incarnation of Monotract — Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore also on guitar, Burning Star Core’s C. Spencer Yeh on violin, and Magik Marker’s Pete Nolan on drums — generating a memorable, noise-fueled set only tangentially related to the genuine article’s powerful album that same year, Trueno Oscuro (Load). The fourth album by the band ended up drawing praise from both Pitchfork Media and The Wire for its loud-soft waves of epic distortion ("Red Tide"), no-wave-ish blurt ("Cafu y Kaka"), and electronic-groan tribal-chant ("Big N"), which saw Garcia memorably motor-mouthing toward the reverb-bristled finale.

Apparently Garcia is not only resourceful in a jam, but something of a triple, even quadruple, threat. The Miami, Fla., native of Cuban American descent has been working in dance, video, and visual art, in addition to music, since moving to NYC eight years ago, where she studied at the Merce Cunningham dance studio and recently received a master’s in interactive technology at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. And she’s traveled far —aesthetically and geographically — from her sun-baked teen years in Miami, listening to grunge on the radio and flailing at her guitar as part of Rat Bastard’s Laundry Room Squelchers.

Her first tour with the noise group at 18 led to some "permanent damage, for sure," she says with a chuckle, speaking by phone from NYC. "I was really young and in high school, so it was just really amazing that someone invited me to go on a stage and I could play whatever I wanted. Basically there was no judgment passed, ever."

A dancer since age six, Garcia began composing music and dance at around the same time, so it was natural that one medium informed the other. Garcia’s 2007 dance piece, No Keys, for instance, juxtaposed frugging and head-banging rock moves drawn from Tina Turner and Iggy Pop with lyrics from the Slits and John Holt, beneath one of the musician’s wall-size drawings. Another work, 2005’s localstwang, saw Garcia moving and making music simultaneously, using contact mics attached to effects pedals and amps. That sense of play will factor into Garcia’s Mission Creek show — a first for her as a solo live performer: it will involve guitar, oscillators, and perhaps other "random instruments in the space," she offers. "I like to stay sort of open. Oh, also some movement. It’s hard not to move when there’s music playing."

NANCY GARCIA

With Fishbeck/Duplantier, Jane(t) Pants, and Kunsole

Fri/18, 8 p.m., $5–<\d>$15 sliding scale

New Langton Arts

1246 Folsom, SF

(415) 626-5416

Dye, dye, darlings

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Feel like dyeing? If yes, there are many products available to help you do so, but it’s unlikely that any color you choose will be anywhere near as exciting as the fearsome fun that Bleachy Bleachy Bleach conjures up. By the time they’ve set a dance beat behind their computer-scrambled screams and guitars, second-guessing is out of the question: these two shred hard without having to bring any ordinary instruments on stage.

Band members Kadienne Eslami and Jessie Abbey met in high school in Pleasanton and often went to shows in Oakland, Berkeley, and friends’ houses before deciding to start a band. According to Eslami, who spoke about the project by phone from her Pleasanton home, it was the frequent re-dyeing of their formerly purple and pink heads of hair that brought about the Bleachy Bleachy Bleach name — a moniker that also suggests the purging, triply frown-obliterating force of their music. Smiles are what got them started in the first place. "We started out playing through a PlayStation on a DDR mat, then started putting more emotion into it," said Eslami, who spells out her first name on one of the group’s earliest tracks, "Boobopera," before the bass beat kicks in and a splintered "easy lemon squeezy" rap unravels into screeches and buzzing chatter in French.

They employ noise in a variety of ways, alternately emotional and playful: the manic skitter of their new song "Toys" closes out its beat with a small dog’s bark. The duo also make use of a toy guitar, saxophone, and other assorted odd instruments in their convention-melting assemblages.

"Mostly what we do is record with instruments and collaborate with friends to make beats," Eslami says, "particularly Dylan Reznick from [the now-defunct band] Robin Williams on Fire, and most recently with Vice Cooler of XBXRX." When gigging on the John Benson–built Bus venue and elsewhere, they sing on microphones alongside their programmed laptop, adding that human presence that makes their songs so affecting. "Tennies," a song off their 12-inch coming out later this year, is about a guy Eslami met on Muni who had holes drilled in his head: "he explained how when people talk to him, he interprets their sentences backwards and has to translate them back to himself." Backwards translation won’t be necessary to keep beat with the Bleach, but scratching a chalkboard could make for fun accompaniment.

BLEACHY BLEACHY BLEACH

With Rubber O Cement, Take Up Serpents, Ettrick, Amir Coyle, Mikey Yeda, and Hora Flora

July 17, 8 p.m. doors, $5

Balazo 18

2183 Mission, SF

www.balazogallery.com

Resurrection blues

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

Lazarus has risen — in North Beach. Picture him, dazed and confused, perfumed with decay and dragging a tattered burial cloth, easily mistaken for yet another starry-eyed traveler in search of beat antiquities, wandering down Columbus Street. But the Bible-thumping, god’s honest truth is Lazarus is more likely to be sighted making a beeline into Café Trieste, work-weary and bright-eyed, smiling broadly and snatching a small iced coffee at the counter. That’s our latter-day Lazarus, otherwise known as Trevor Montgomery, once a member of Tarentel and the Drift and now generating an occasionally beautiful, always heartfelt moan of his own, last heard on 2007’s almost-epic animistic howl of a recording, Hawk Medicine (Temporary Residence).

We meet at Montgomery’s former workplace, Trieste, amid the still wild-eyed bohos, newly pressed and somewhat impressed seekers, and aspiring poets — or at least bloggers — hunched over laptops in crusty corners. Montgomery slips into the crowd seamlessly here at his liberation locale. When he first moved to North Beach about five years ago, he lived in a Chinatown hotel — as the sole non-Cantonese speaker. "It really freed me up to really write songs because I’d been living with Danny [Grody] and Jefre [Cantu-Ledesma] in Tarentel for years before that and I could never play," he explains above the din of java-making. "I felt like everybody was listening to me."

Now in the shadow of Coit Tower, Montgomery is glad to find that people are indeed listening: the four-piece touring version of Lazarus — which includes Kathryn Sechrist and Kelly Nyland in addition to the Papercuts’ Jason Quever — recently returned from a date at All Tomorrow’s Parties in the United Kingdom, curated by Montgomery’s friends Explosions in the Sky. He swears it was probably Lazarus’ best performance to date. "People surprisingly wouldn’t let me leave the stage," he says happily. "I’m really, like, all blown away." On top of that was the thrill of selling merch next to Wu-Tang Clan and Animal Collective.

Unfortunately there’s sadness mixed in with the joy. Montgomery also has had to cope with the aftershocks of his mother’s massive brain aneurysm two months ago, which sent him down to Orange County, where he grew up, to "take care of my dad and make dinner for him." Still, he was able to take his recording gear to make music in his parents’ garage — pieces that likely will show up on his forthcoming 12-inch on Secretly Canadian offshoot St. Ives, which will sport recycled, hand-modified LP covers courtesy of Montgomery and his artist chum Ryan Coffey. "I think the theme of the record musically is going to be extremes: opposites," Montgomery says. "I’ve been doing just a lot of wild, maniacal guitar playing." He laughs and throws his arms around. "You know, I have a lot of that in me. I need to get it out." *

LAZARUS

With Tiny Vipers and Garrett Pierce

Thurs/17, 9:30 p.m., $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

Get the Drift

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If you haven’t caught wind of the Drift, maybe you should take that coat off. This San Francisco outfit’s instrumental rock creeps deftly outward and upward into an exhilarating, rapidly unfolding sprawl, channeling dub and old school jazz fusion in its whirring excursions.

Over the phone from SF, Danny Grody, the group’s guitarist and keyboardist, happily talked about the band’s inception and recording their second album, Memory Drawings, released in April on Temporary Residence. The Drift began as a trio — including Grody; drummer Rich Douthit; and Trevor Montgomery, who later left to focus on his main project, Lazarus — coalescing tangentially to the buzzing prog-scape of Tarentel into a group with a more contemplative and spacious jazz-like dynamic. Thanks to trumpeter Jeff Jacobs’ entrance through an ad on Craigslist and the upright bass playing of Safa Shokrai, the lineup that produced 2005’s Noumena (Temporary Residence) and Memory Drawings came together.

"With our older songs, parts tended to linger a bit in the ether before they settled," said Grody, who points out that the trumpet and guitar carry the melody in tandem this time out, while the whole ensemble tightened the shifts between the "more structured elements and the more amorphous, abstract spaces" of their music. Tracks like "Golden Sands" are delightfully reminiscent of the sighing final two albums from Talk Talk: brushed drums and airy, delayed guitar work are overlaid with ghostly trumpet smears and keyboards that could have been on Terry Riley’s Rainbow in Curved Air (Columbia, 1967).

Recorded with Jay Pellicci at Tiny Telephone in SF, Memory Drawings sports a title inspired by Donal Mosher’s sleeve art, which depicts a Colter Jacobsen photograph of a moon-flash on a dark ocean at two levels of remove — a pencil drawing in an LP sleeve composed from memory of the photograph, and a second drawing rendered from a memory of the prior memory. These "memory drawings" are eerily similar to, as Grody points out, the band’s own approach to recording and live performance: their collective memory of their songs, free-form in length and in varying stages of completion, ultimately determines their recorded and performed shapes. Boasting an "arsenal of fragments" alongside more finished grooves, Grody explains, the Drift "tried to cover the spectrum from really defined pieces to things that are more skeletal" in laying their efforts to tape. These songs remain in continual drift, highlighting the beauty possible when music forges new space within the sometimes serendipitous gaps of memory.

The Drift

With Christopher Willits, Mi Ami, Tussle, and Eyes

July 17, 9 p.m., $8

Gray Area Gallery

1515 Folsom, SF

www.mcmf.org

Can’t knock the Tussle

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Playing name-that-tune with Tussle isn’t easy. The San Francisco group makes instrumentals. As founding member Nathan Burazer puts it, they’re "not very word-oriented." And neither am I, it turns out, when faced with the challenge of matching the eight out of nine songs I’ve heard from their propulsive Cream Cuts (Smalltown Supersound) with the album’s final track listing. For a minute, I try to get new member, bassist and electronics player Tomo Yasuda, to ID songs based on my descriptions, but noting that one number — "Transparent C" — has a beep-beep motif, not unlike that of a Road Runner cartoon, only gets us so far. There’s some merriment when another song with handclaps that a mutual pal describes as the "gay one" turns out to have the title "Rainbow Claw." But in the end, it’s easiest to discuss and define Cream Cuts while listening to it.

Which is fine with me, because from first listen I’ve considered Cream Cuts one of the best albums of the year — a metamorphosis in which the band’s rhythmic core becomes more sinuous, its atmospherics more expansive, and its overall sound both deeper and more party-ready. Though the foreboding planet-of-the-vampires ambience of "Third Party" would not be out of place on Cluster’s underrated Cluster 2 (Brain, 1972), Burazer is clear that he and fellow original member Jonathan Holland are striving to move beyond the "File under: ESG" or "File under: Can" download dog-tags sometimes attached to their 2004 debut Kling Klang (Troubleman Unlimited) and 2006’s Telescope Mind (Smalltown Superound). In fact, "File under: Wu-Tang" would be a more interesting — and correct — frame of reference for the new release’s downtempo moments. "We listen to a lot of hip-hop," Burazer says. "A lot of Wu-Tang, Ghostface, Lil Wayne, and J-Dilla."

The cover art for Cream Cuts, by Simon Evans and Lart Cognac Berliner, uses hand-woven colored paper. The music inside is bathed in moonlight. This nighttime resplendence is apt, since all four current members of Tussle — including Holland’s fellow drummer Warren Huegel — are fans of the blind street musician and compositional visionary Moondog. But whereas Moondog’s old stomping ground was Sixth Avenue in NYC, Tussle is creating a SF city sound. It’s a sound that can be traced back to North Carolina in 1994, when Burazer and Holland first turned one room in a shared apartment into a place to make music. On new tracks such as "ABACBA" and "Titan," the jam session intuitiveness at the core of Burazer’s and Holland’s bond takes on a new finesse, momentum, and flair for drama.

All of the above reach anthemic immediacy on Cream Cuts‘ "Night of the Hunter." There, the chunkiness of past Tussle recordings gives way to a more fluid and formidable funkiness. It takes a certain nerve to give a song the same name as a classic film, but Burazer has an innate understanding of the Southern menace and beauty within Charles Laughton’s 1955 masterwork. The electronics player’s childhood in Carolina included time spent in a cult. "My parents and I were full-time volunteers in this hospice in the mountains [that turned into a cult]," he explains. "There was a guru, everyone met on the full moon, and there was wife- and child-swapping. There were no drugs or sexual violence — it was mild. But it was a cult."

The experience — one I relate to somewhat — left Burazer "allergic to holier-than-thou authority figures." Instead of a follow-the-leader dynamic, he and Holland built Tussle on a foundation of cooperative intuition, and they’ve discovered another level of open, even-handed collaboration with the group’s newest member, Yasuda. "Tomo puts me at ease," Burazer says. "He’s so easy to work with and so brilliant. He has a calming quality. Things are light with him, even though he’s carrying the low end musically. As a person, he’s playful." This playfulness is just as fruitful in another of Yasuda’s current projects, Coconut, where he and visual artist Colter Jacobsen create meandering folk and jazz improvisations that Arthur Russell might appreciate.

Tussle in 2008 aren’t without a sense of humor or adventure, whether it involves playing under the influence of natural hallucinogens in a Museum of Natural History or bringing a Gay.com Frisbee in their percussion bag to a show at CellSpace. In the end, naming what they do or attempting to define it is beside the point. "Some of the [song] titles come from [playing] Mad Libs on tour," Burazer offers when I ask how this group of instrumentalists deals with words. It makes sense: Cream Cuts is Tussle’s mad liberation from past constraints, a ‘shrooming world of sound that offers pleasure right now, and hints of greater possibilities to come.

TUSSLE

With Christopher Willits, Mi Ami, the Drift, and Eyes

July 17, 9 p.m., $8

Gray Area Gallery

1515 Folsom, SF

www.mcmf.org

COCONUT

With Waters and Hollers, and Shygrape

July 17, 9 p.m., $5

Argus Lounge

3187 Mission, SF

www.mcmf.org

At his Beck and call

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The year 1994 was when Beck Hansen finally went electric. Prior to Mellow Gold (Geffen), he lodged in a shed, made homespun cassettes of lo-fi recordings, and busked on the streets of Los Angeles. Panned by critics as a novelty for slacker-minded Gen Xers, Beck epitomized the slack, flannel-draped, messy-haired ethos of most teenagers at the time — myself included — and his post-grunge anthem, "Loser," catapulted him to buzz clip status on MTV faster then you could spell Porno for Pyros. Shortly afterward, K Records quietly released One Foot in the Grave — an album’s worth of folk songs recorded before Mellow Gold that pretty much fell upon deaf ears while Beck rode his commercial wave of fame.

Mattey Hunter of the Portland, Ore., psych-folk-noise duo Meth Teeth, however, took notice. The vocalist-guitarist revealed through an e-mail that he purchased the album when he was 12 because "Loser" was "all over the radio," and he still considers it to be at the one of his favorite records.

"It’s just Beck and some friends, a trash-can acoustic, and him playing the songs he wants to play, totally stripped down," he pointed out. "He covers blues songs and sings sad love songs. I’ve never gotten into the other stuff he did, but that one blows my mind."

Meth Teeth’s folky inclinations are foreshadowed on the CD-R Hunter sent me in the mail. The disc comprises songs from the group’s February self-titled seven-inch on the Sweet Rot imprint as well as a handful of tracks from their forthcoming debut, Taking Dude Mountain by Strategy. It’s raw, yet Hunter and drummer Kyle Raquipiso jack up the din so that the needles kiss the red. The tunes are ultra-catchy with a psych-pop garagey tang. The amplifiers sound fried and blown out with fuzz and hiss while Raquipiso bangs away at his kit, and Hunter’s drawls are syrupy and monotone in delivery. You can hear Syd Barrett and the Kinks at once, but Hunter claims he started Meth Teeth in reaction to his past musical experiences, "coming from a long line of punk bands and dealing with shitty band politics."

"There is a great to deal to be said about someone who writes about what they think or feel rather than doing that post-punk lyrical thing that sounds like you’re trying to rip off David Byrne’s ideas," Hunter writes. "I love David Byrne, but you gotta change it up every once in a while. All styles wear out their welcome, as they should."

METH TEETH

Sun/6, 9:30 p.m., $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

No wallflowers

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… And you shall know Tilly and the Wall by their tap-dancing rather than their drumming, their girl-gang vocals, their dazzling finery, the virtual — and at times, I swear, literal — confetti in the air. So is it any shock that the Omaha, Neb., five-piece, once better known as a Bright Eyes spin-off, has become one of the most beloved live indie acts to still hop in a van and hit the road? Nonetheless, the ensemble, which more often resembles a hyperpositive winsome art project than your average stony-faced indie rock unit, has weathered its share of audience adversity.

"We once played a coffeehouse, opening for Pedro the Lion, and there was one guy sitting in front, sawing logs," muses vocalist Neely Jenkins from Omaha, thinking back on the band’s oddest performances. "We were like, ‘Really? We’re that boring? We gotta do something.’<0x2009>"

Hence the Tilly and the Wall approach: no snores, no folded-arms bores, and this time out, a crew member devoted to lights. "Having gone to shows since I was in junior high, I know what shows excite me," says Jenkins, 34, who once performed with tap-dancing bandmate Jamie Pressnall in Conor Oberst’s poppy Park Ave. "It is nice to have something to look at, to make it more fun and more visually stimuutf8g. Especially now because tickets are so expensive — you better put on a good show."

The wild children of the Midwest are attempting to hold their fans’ attention offstage as well with their latest, third full-length, a multitextured affair enigmatically titled O (Team Love), after the oval frame that will surround the various, limited-edition, handmade prints created by friends. The covers’ collages, watercolors, and cartoonish imagery visually parallels the collaborative approach of Tilly and the Wall, touching on O‘s new moods and musical turns, which capture both feisty girl-group pop ("Blood Flowers") and sample-propelled Of Montreal–like psych-bounce ("Chandelier Lake").

"Our sounds have been sort of lighter, but our subject matter has always been a little bit darker," Jenkins explains. "I feel like there were some more truthful feelings in this one. It wasn’t just the happier side of life. It wasn’t a cover. There was some real stuff going on."

TILLY AND THE WALL

Tues/8, 9 p.m., $17

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

www.gamh.com

Hirocks

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"We’re like a cockroach," explains Hirax vocalist Katon W. De Pena early on in our lively recent phone interview. "You can’t kill us." De Pena founded Hirax in Los Angeles in 1984, and if his enthusiasm is any indication, the enemies of metal better start stockpiling Raid. Although they never achieved the towering reputation of the bands they rubbed shoulders with in the 1980s, De Pena’s newly reinvigorated outfit is working harder than ever, deep in the once-underground thrash trenches including gradually disinterred, now-ascendant old-schoolers like Death Angel, Exodus, and Testament, and eager newcomers such as Municipal Waste, Hatchet, and Merciless Death.

Hirax has second billing behind Exodus at the 11th Tidal Wave Festival, a free outdoor metal concert taking place July 5 and 6 in John McLaren Park. Way back in 1984, the band got its first big break with a feature in Tim Yohannon’s influential Bay Area zine, Maximum Rocknroll, and De Pena overflows with appreciation for the support San Francisco has shown his group over the years: "Playing free is like giving something back to the movement that helped spawn thrash metal. We have a lot of great memories from playing San Francisco."

The outfit has always had a fiercely independent streak, which served them in good stead when a bunch of guys in flannel hacked down the tent pole at the metal big top in the early ’90s. Since parting with Metal Blade in 1986, Hirax’s members have been the masters of their headbanging domain, releasing albums through their own label and distributing them around the world through licensing deals with major players like Relapse and Century Media Records.

This uncompromising approach has won them widespread respect, and relentless touring has uncovered dormant thrashers desperate for something to rock out to. De Pena has become a connoisseur of the American metal heartland. "In the US, there are cities that are just amazing, like Allentown, Penn.," he says. "We meet these fans, and it puts it in perspective why you do it. They believe in you. That they care so much keeps you caring."

It looks like a new dawn for thrash in America, and De Pena thinks his band is ready to capitalize. Crediting his natural stubbornness and the support of his "total metalhead" wife who saw him through the dark days of the ’90s, the ebullient frontman sees a bright future ahead. "I think people are looking for something exciting, and thrash metal has that," says De Pena. "It always was very exciting. Over the last 10 years, music has gotten pop-y or emo or nü metal, and people have wanted something with more edge to it. It’s just gotten better and better [for Hirax] every year."

TIDAL WAVE FESTIVAL

With Exodus, Psychosomatic, Havok, Ludicra, Saros, and others

Sat/5–Sun/6, noon–6 p.m., free

Jerry Garcia Amphitheater

John McLaren Park

45 Shelley, SF

www.thetidalwave.org

Fillmore Jazz Festival

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PREVIEW Known during the ’40s and ’50s as the "Harlem of the West," the Fillmore District once housed a spirited enclave of West Coast jazz culture. Over time the district has endured periods of struggle. The recently installed Fillmore branch of Yoshi’s symbolizes the district’s fight to respect its past while staying in step with the present.

The Fillmore Jazz Festival began after much of the current "urban renewal" (i.e., the construction of large apartment buildings) took hold. Now in its 24th year, the popular two-day festival draws nearly 100,000 people as a strong reminder of jazz’s prominence in the Fillmore. The musical slate holds many established local performers, including Fillmore veteran Kim Nalley, local favorites Jazz on Mondays, and world-influenced Sila and the Afrofunk experience.

Bruce Forman is one of the prime-time headliners. The longtime guitarist began the JazzMasters Workshop in 2001, a nonprofit focused on giving free jazz lessons to kids. In 2006 he became an artist in residence at University of Southern California’s studio/jazz guitar department. With Western-influenced band Cow Bop, Forman recently completed his own Route 66 Challenge, which consisted of Forman and company touring along the length of the famous highway, with the proceeds going toward the JazzMasters Workshop.

FILLMORE JAZZ FESTIVAL With Bruce Forman, Barton Tyler Group, Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, Jazz on Mondays, Randy Vincent Quartet, Sila and the Afrofunk Experience, Kim Nalley, Vinyl, and more. Sat/5–Sun/6, 10 a.m.– 6 p.m. Fillmore between Eddy and Jackson, SF. Free. 1-800-310-6563, www.fillmorejazzfestival.com

Mr. V

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PREVIEW Anybody out there miss hip-house? I do, although I often blush at its bare innocence — coming at a time before the separatism of gangsta rap and corporate rave, when 1980s MCs like Fast Eddie, Kool Rock Steady, Merlin, or the Wee Papa Girls could preen over a jazzy or acid-inflected groove and it felt like underground worlds colliding brilliantly.

Nuyorican house DJ, producer, and rapper Mr. V isn’t exactly the reincarnation of that much-maligned genre, although 2005’s "V Gets Jazzy" (Vega) with Louie Vega is a fierce update of KC Flightt’s 1987 hip-house classic "Let’s Get Jazzy" (TMT). Mr. V’s not even a rapper, per se — he’s more into gently exhorting the crowd to "Put Your Drink Down," do "Da Bump," and "Jus’ Dance," because he’s giving you "Somethin’ With Jazz." Those four spoken-vocal jams have been lodged in club speakers worldwide for the past three years, and the 34-year-old Mr. V’s instantly recognizable voice, combined with spooky-stunning mixes from Masters at Work and Quentin Harris, has injected some of the old hip-house glow and energy into house’s ever-looming loungeteria doldrums. When Mr. V sexily growls, "Bring some baby powder to the dance floor," boards from Brooklyn to Jo’burg get liberally sprinkled.

V’ll be spinning an old-school eclectic set — and hopefully taking the mic — at Mighty on Saturday, July 5 as part of the "For the Love of House" party, a title that somewhat confusingly refers to yet another nuevo hip-house hit, 2005’s "4 the Love" by DJ Karizma, who’ll be appearing July 13 at the Super Soul Sundayz weekly in the Temple catacombs (www.myspace.com/supersoulsundayz). A mini hip-house revival? Break out the talcum. (Marke B.)

"FOR THE LOVE OF HOUSE" With Mr. V, John Cutler, Michael Tello, and others. Sat/5, 10 p.m., $10 advance. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. (415) 626-7001, www.mighty119.com

Back Fasheezy

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After three and a half years chasing rappers for the Guardian, I’ve met, photographed, and finally interviewed Keak da Sneak, but never all at once. Getting ahold of E-40 is a breeze compared to tracking down Keak. One of the only Bay artists whose singles routinely play on KMEL, even hitting number one locally with 2005’s "Super Hyphy," Keak is perpetually hot and therefore elusive. When I recently interviewed Keak by phone, he was a continent away in NYC, under the watchful eye of Koch Records executives eager to promote his new album, Deified.

The release of Deified on Koch, one of the country’s biggest independent imprints, is significant not just for Keak but for the entire Bay Area. While major-label discs by Mistah FAB and Clyde Carson continue to languish, Deified could be the breakthrough everyone’s hoping for. With his diehard local following, plus an instantly recognizable, burbling, volcanic growl spewing out new slang like "hyphy" and "fasheezy," Keak has a real shot at shattering the glass ceiling frustrating the Bay’s national ambitions.

"My fans and the Bay are behind me, but I want to see the world’s reaction," Keak said. "I wanted to make this album much more than a Bay Area album."

Naturally, the question arises: where was this album in ’05 when "Super Hyphy" was peaking? Originally released on the Rah Records compilation Dopegame 2, "Super Hyphy" was such an unexpected hit that Keak had no album ready to follow. Moreover, in 2006, after making national noise on E-40’s "Tell Me When to Go," Keak was in a contractual dispute he claims scuttled major-label interest.

"Right after ‘Tell Me When to Go’ and the hyphy movement, when that wave was going, people expected me to drop," he recalled. "I had [Universal Records executive] Sylvia Rome come to my house and try to give me $1 million. Someone claimed I had a contract with them, but they never sent a copy. They bluffed us for a year, so I missed that deal."

Besides holding up his own career, the delay, Keak feels, also squandered hyphy’s momentum. "The introduction wasn’t right because my album didn’t drop," said the rapper. "40 opened the door with that single, but he still didn’t introduce hyphy. He introduced the hyphy movement."

"But hyphy is a ritual. It’s a Bay way of life," Keak continued, referring to the dread-shaking, ghostriding ghetto culture that shows no sign of waning. "This is what we do every day. So hyphy has never died. The movement might have died because we ain’t sticking together."

Of course, in order to have impact, Deified needs to be tight, and Keak’s releases haven’t always been top-shelf. While there’s been no shortage of Keak titles during the last few years, Keak claims only three previous solo discs — Sneakacydal (Moedoe, 1999), Hi-Tek (Moedoe, 2001), and Copium (Sumday, 2003) — disowning much of his extensive catalog.

"People said they had me under contract and were just gathering up songs," he complained. "The deals weren’t the right deal, so when I fell back on that shit, these guys put albums out."

Fortunately, Deified is exactly what Keak wants, down to the cover art. Produced almost entirely by Modesto’s Young Mozart, responsible for Keak’s popular "That Go," which is present in remix form and features Prodigy and Alchemist, the album contains the burgeoning radio single, "Nothing Without You," with Messy Marv — a rare love song for both rappers and a good indication of how well-rounded an artist Keak has become. Most important, while local rappers often distance themselves from the region’s sound when attempting to go national, Deified is unmistakably a contemporary Bay Area album, even as it looks back to classic mob music.

Since his deal with Koch involves just one album, the disc could be the springboard back into major label consideration. "I didn’t want to get tied up for three or four years," Keak concluded. "I want to drop this album, see how it do, then talk to the majors again." Here’s hoping Deified leads to that conversation.

Asunder

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PREVIEW Listening to Asunder is freaking me out. It’s the middle of the night, the moon is full, and I was barely paying attention to the plodding funereal doom. That is, until I glimpsed a foreign movement from the corner of my eye and, sensing a phantasmic force, my heart plummeted into my guts. If John Gossard’s eerie chants, likely effective at summoning Lucifer from the bowels of a very cold hell, didn’t raise ghosts previously unheard from in my creaky Victorian, what did?

It’s no secret if you’re even passingly attuned to local music happenings — or ever pick up this paper — that the doom-death community on both sides of the Bay is close-knit and as prolific as a war graveyard at the height of collateral damage. But Asunder just might be the darkest, dreariest, and most melodically melancholy of them all. But it’s too simple to relegate their metal dirges to the staid realm of the glacial and miserable; Asunder begs the question, "Can doom be dynamic?" and answers in the affirmative. Patience and subtlety, reverence and yes, the spiritual, are conjured in equal parts by down-tuned strings and minor keys. When their sophomore release, 2006’s Works Will Come Undone (Profound Lore Records) — produced by the East Bay’s esteemed Billy Anderson (High on Fire, Saros) — filled 72 minutes and 45 seconds with two epic tracks, it was risky but the foursome added enough slow complexity to make it work. Let their chilling arrangements and a newly upgraded sound system tempt your ghosts at the Oakland Metro Opera’s grand reopening.

ASUNDER With Trees, Necrite, Skin Horse, and DJ Bad Jew. Fri/27, 8 p.m., $8. Oakland Metro Opera House, 630 Third St., Oakl. (510) 763-1146, www.oaklandmetro.org


Asunder with Trouble and Mammatus. Wed/9, 8pm, $16-$18, Slim’s, www.slims-sf.com

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